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Saturday, July 20, 2013

A School for Syrian Refugees, ‘Shouting for Help’

When Dania al-Betar began her school for Syrian refugees in January 2011, she had only 16 students. Now, she has more than 1,600.

Ms. Betar is the principal of the Al Bashair school for Syrian refugees in Antakya, Turkey. On the day before summer break in early June, dozens of raucous elementary students sang and played in the school’s courtyard.

The school sits on the edge of a residential area surrounded by wheat fields. Inside the stark concrete building, tiny rooms were packed with students. The building was not intended as a school; during winter rains, its dirt courtyard flooded and turned to mud.

“The school is shouting for help,” Ms. Betar said. “Last month, the teachers did not get salaries. We had nothing.”

Only a few Syrian expatriate donors have been helping her care for the students, she said. The teachers and staff members are volunteers, and are rarely paid. The school lacks money for basic supplies such as pencils and paper, or transportation for the scattered students.
There are dozens of such unofficial schools on the Turkish border, and hundreds across the region. Most are in similar situations, with few resources and limited support.

Aid groups estimate that there are 1.6 million school-age children among the refugees from Syria’s civil war. Inside Syria, the education system has fallen apart amid the daily struggle to stay alive. Outside Syria, the scope and duration of the conflict have taxed the resources of governments and international aid organizations. Syrians in neighboring countries like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have stepped in to meet the education needs of refugees with unofficial schools.

“We do consider that much better than the alternative, which is no education,” said Rachel McKinney, director of education in emergencies at the nonprofit group Save the Children. Host governments have been welcoming to students, she said, but the number of children fleeing the conflict has created a burden that local schools could not shoulder.

Aid organizations, foreign governments and individual donors have provided a fraction of the financing that Syria’s displaced schoolchildren need. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that $45 million is required to meet minimum education needs for Syrian refugees. By last month, only $9 million has been provided to aid organizations for education. Of total global financing for humanitarian emergencies, education receives only 1.4 percent.

“Nothing can happen without funding,” Ms. McKinney said. “One of the reasons that we haven’t been able to respond to all of the requests is that funding is almost nonexistent in Syria.”

Syria had high levels of literacy and an advanced, secular education system before the war. Now, many of the country’s children have gone months or years without formal schooling. Ms. Betar is determined to teach her students, but has little hope of receiving assistance. Against the scale of human tragedy in Syria, education for the young hardly registers.